different between picket vs splint

English

Etymology

From French piquet, from piquer (“to pierce”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /?p?k?t/
• Rhymes: -?k?t
• Hyphenation: pick?et

Noun

picket (countable and uncountable, plural pickets)

1. A stake driven into the ground.

2. (historical) A type of punishment by which an offender had to rest his or her entire body weight on the top of a small stake.
3. A tool in mountaineering that is driven into the snow and used as an anchor or to arrest falls.
4. (military) One of the soldiers or troops placed on a line forward of a position to warn against an enemy advance; or any unit (for example, an aircraft or ship) performing a similar function.
   • 1990, Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game, Folio Society 2010, p. 59:

     So confident was he that he ignored the warning of his two British advisers to post pickets to watch the river, and even withdrew those they had placed there.

5. (sometimes figuratively) A sentry.
6. A protester positioned outside an office, workplace etc. during a strike (usually in plural); also the protest itself.
7. (card games, uncountable) The card game piquet.

Derived terms

• picket line
• picket pin
• picket rope

Translations

Verb

picket (third-person singular simple present pickets, present participle picketing, simple past and past participle picketed)

1. (intransitive) To protest, organized by a labour union, typically in front of the location of employment.
2. (transitive) To enclose or fortify with pickets or pointed stakes.
3. (transitive) To tether to, or as if to, a picket.

   to picket a horse

4. (transitive) To guard, as a camp or road, by an outlying picket.
5. (obsolete, transitive) To torture by forcing to stand with one foot on a pointed stake.

Derived terms

• picketing (noun)
• unpicketed

German

Pronunciation

Verb

picket

1. second-person plural subjunctive I of picken

English

Etymology

From Middle English splint, splent, splente, from Middle Low German splinte, splente or Middle Dutch splint, splinte. Cognate with Old High German splinza (“bar, bolt, latch”). All ultimately from Proto-Germanic *splint?, *splint? (“piece of wood, splinter”), from Proto-Germanic *splint-, *splind- (“to split”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pley- (“to split, splice”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /spl?nt/

Noun

splint (plural splints)

1. A narrow strip of wood split or peeled from a larger piece.
2. (dentistry) A dental device applied consequent to undergoing orthodontia.
3. (medicine) A device to immobilize a body part.
4. (military, historical) A segment of armour consisting of a narrow overlapping plate.
5. (mining) Synonym of splent coal
6. (zootomy) A bone found on either side of a horse's cannon bone; the second or fourth metacarpal (forelimb) or metatarsal (hindlimb) bone.
7. (zootomy, veterinary medicine) A disease affecting the splint bones, as a callosity or hard excrescence.

Usage notes

• For a horse to pop a splint is for it to receive an injury to the splint bone or surrounding area.

Derived terms

• shin splint
• splinter

Translations

Verb

splint (third-person singular simple present splints, present participle splinting, simple past and past participle splinted)

1. (transitive) To apply a splint to; to fasten with splints.
2. To support one's abdomen with hands or a pillow before attempting to cough.
3. (obsolete, rare, transitive) To split into thin, slender pieces; to splinter.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Florio to this entry?)

Translations